Chickahominy Swamp.
For months Major-General McClellan, commander of the army of the Potomac, had pursued his fated peninsula campaign. Along the peninsula in early spring he had marched his mighty army to the speedy capture of Richmond.
Battles were lost; battles were won. Chances were lost; chances were blindly thrown away.
More than once the spires of Richmond were in plain view to the grim, tired men of the ranks. On one occasion, had they been allowed to press their advantage, they could have charged into the Confederate capital’s streets at the heels of a lesser body of foes who were in headlong flight.
But that one golden chance had been lost through official hesitation; and it could never come again.
For Lee and Jackson, by massing their scattered forces, rendered the city impregnable. Whenever fresh danger seemed to threaten Richmond, Lee made a demonstration toward Washington, which caused a rushing of Federal regiments to repel the supposed danger and rendered a mass attack on Richmond out of the question.
So, through a terrible summer of non-achievement, the once redoubtable army of the Potomac lay for the most part in Chickahominy Swamp. Lay there and rotted.
Pestilence did not “stalk” through the camps. It swept through them like the lightning breath of the death-angel.
To one man who died in battle four died of disease. A locality that even the heat-hardened Virginians were wont to shun in summer, Chickahominy Swamp exacted horrible toll of lives from the Northern invaders.
Thus rested, wearily inactive, the army that was the hope and pride of the Union. And at every turn Lee and Jackson outgeneraled its leaders; the Confederate force opposing to the ill-led Northerners’ greater bulk a speed and deftness that paralyzed its foe.